The Patch at the Boat Ramp

Why I didn’t fight

People have asked me since why I didn’t call the sheriff, or march over to Ansel’s place and have it out with him, or send Corwin.

Corwin is my husband. He is 43, and he is a lineman for the electric cooperative, and that week he was on a storm crew down in Louisiana, working sixteen-hour days putting poles back up after a bad blow came through.

I called him at noon on his break and told him. He was quiet for so long I thought the call had dropped.

“I’m coming home,” he said finally. “I’ll be there tonight.”

“No,” I said. “You’re not.”

“Tessa.”

“You’re doing good work down there, and they need you, and if you came home you would go straight to Ansel’s,” I said. “And I love you for it. But you would meet him in some parking lot, and it would go bad, and Marlys would take his side.”

He didn’t argue, because he knew I was right. My sister is the kind who defends whoever is getting hit, even when he deserved it. And a fight in a parking lot would not fix one inch of fiberglass or keep one client.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to fix it,” I said.

He laughed, a short tired laugh. “Your daddy’s kit?”

“My daddy’s kit.”

“Then you’d better get started,” he said. “Call me tonight. I love you.”

Dad’s box

My father taught me most of what I know about boats and nearly everything I know about patience. He worked on boats at the marina for thirty years before he started guiding, and he could lay fiberglass the way some women can sew.

When he died, I got his tackle and his good rods and his old faded red ball cap, which I wear most days on the water. And I got a cardboard box from the back of his shop, with his fiberglass kit in it.

It was all still there when I went home and opened it. A grinder with a pile of worn sanding discs. A roll of fiberglass cloth wrapped in a plastic bread sack to keep the dust off. Mixing cups, stir sticks, a squeegee, a box of latex gloves, two putty knives, and a stack of his notes on index cards.

The resin itself was too old to trust. I drove to the hardware store in town and bought new epoxy resin with a slow hardener for the cool weather, a fresh roll of cloth, a can of fairing filler, and a box of new grinding discs.

The woman at the register looked at the pile and smiled. “Somebody’s got a project,” she said.

“Somebody’s brother-in-law has a project,” I said. “I’m just the one doing it.”

I was back at the ramp by two o’clock. I decided to patch it right where Ansel left it. The ramp lot had room, and the minute the patch cured I could back it straight in and see if it leaked.